At the Idaho Youth Ranch, equine therapy is available to children and families who participate in any of our programs and services, not only kids in residential care. That includes family therapy, group and individual counseling, short-term crisis relief, even adoption services--because it gets such great results.
At last July’s Wine, Women & Shoes fundraising event in Coeur d’Alene, IYR clinician Amanda Smith shared an amazing story with hundreds of generous guests, all gathered to support promising futures for Idaho kids and families. With her permission we're glad to have the opportunity to share this story with you. The story is true, but we've changed the hero's name to protect his privacy.
It was a sultry Saturday afternoon, 109 degrees in the shade. Three therapists and three teenage girls from Hays House sat under the park’s only tree, watching the sun beat down on three horses in a sand-filled arena with no shade at all. They (the humans, not the horses) were discussing the idea of “willingness” and the girls were being asked to think about and try to practice willingness at today’s equine therapy session.
When Katie first came to the Ranch Campus, she had no intention of ever returning home. Adopted as a teenager, she feared that her parents loved their biological kids more and the resulting conflicts had torn the family apart. Her intention was to complete the Ranch program, move into independent living, attend college, and never look back.
When Koda came to the Ranch Campus at 16, he was so full of fight that the staff seriously considered discharging him early, for the safety of the other residents. “I had a whole bunch of anger problems,” he said. “It kind of ran in the family.” His early home life on a rural ranch had revolved around conflict with his mom and brothers. But fortunately it also instilled in him a fascination with horses and cowboy crafts. Koda credits the Ranch’s equine specialists with helping him understand for the first time that anger was something he had choices about.
Turning one child's dangerous path into a promising future often takes a combined collaborative effort. And supporting that new direction means involving the whole family, not just the child. For Justin, the transformation involved IYR's Ranch Campus program, family counseling services, and reintegration services, along with his school and his family's church.
We couldn't make promising futures happen without you!
There’s a new face at Hays House, and he’s not like anyone who’s been admitted or hired before. At three years old, he’s much younger than a typical Hays resident or staff member. Instead of preparing him to go back out into the world on his own, we intend to keep him for life. That’s because, having once been at-risk himself, he has now found his own promising future in a new career of helping others find their promising futures with the Idaho Youth Ranch.